


A Really Lousy Day in the Universe

by Jennifew



Series: Mending [5]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-04-19 23:38:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14248284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jennifew/pseuds/Jennifew
Summary: After Jack runs off with the Doctor, the team gets drunk and once more Ianto is pressed to explain something he'd rather not talk about.





	A Really Lousy Day in the Universe

**Author's Note:**

> With Believe and (presumably) The Last Beacon due out this week, I've decided to go ahead and post the last two stories a few days apart, rather than waiting a week in between like I'd originally planned. While being jossed has never stopped me before, it's always nice to get something up while it might still be canon. :)

Once they'd determined that Jack had left of his own accord--in other words, as soon as they'd checked the CCTV--the team unanimously agreed the only thing to do was get drunk. Clean-up could wait; after the week they'd had they deserved it. Ianto, in a rare moment of spite, broke out Jack's secret stash of really good, really old, whiskey, pouring generously.

At first they drank in silence, no one quite sure whether to be upset with Jack for abandoning them or relieved he was alive again. Not surprisingly, Gwen was the first to speak.

"I don't understand why he'd just leave like that, with no word," she complained.

"We did just betray him," Tosh pointed out. "Kill him, even; can we really blame him for not wanting to stick around?"

"But he came back! It's not like death means anything for him."

Ianto took a large swallow of his whiskey to keep from correcting her. If Gwen couldn't see the toll each death took on Jack, it wasn't his place to inform her. No matter how angry--or guilty--he was feeling.

"We didn't know that, though, did we?" Owen grumbled. "Shot him anyway."

"But he forgave you!" Gwen protested. "And I would've stopped you if I'd thought you were really killing him."

"No, you wouldn't," Ianto corrected her automatically, despite his best intentions.

"Of course I would. I've known Jack can't die for months."

"So have I," he said, wanting to wipe the superior expression off her face. "And you're wrong--he does die, just like anyone else. He just comes back afterward. He still feels it, though, and like Owen said, he _didn't_ know. We were _all_ under alien influence, or it never would have happened. I know if I'd been myself, I never would have turned on him, and I certainly wouldn't have stood by and watched him die, permanent or not. I'm sure you all feel the same. Which is why he did forgive us, but what I don't understand is how you can be surprised if he doesn't want to be around us right now."

Ianto looked up from his glass to see the rest of the team staring at him. "What?"

"I didn't realise you were capable of saying that much at one time," Owen snarked. Ianto gave him a two-finger salute.

"He told you?" Trust Gwen to make it all about herself, he thought uncharitably. It was possible he was a little drunk already. In his defence, he hadn't eaten much the last several days.

"I suspected, asked him about it, he said yes. Told me you knew because you'd seen Suzie kill him, but asked me not to say anything to Tosh and Owen. Sorry," he added to Tosh, since he'd always thought that she would have accepted the news without making a fuss about it, as he had. 

"Why didn't he tell me you knew?" Gwen wondered.

Ianto's patience, already hanging by a thread after recent events, snapped. "Maybe because he didn't trust you to keep his secret once you knew you weren't the only one who knew it? I don't know, I didn't ask. Why don't you ask Jack? Oh, wait, you can't--he's _gone._ "

"Now, listen here, you--"

"Children, children, stop fighting, won't you?" Owen interrupted with an expression that did not, in Ianto's experience, bode well for him. "I think you're all overlooking the really interesting thing that happened today."

"What's that, then?" Gwen asked impatiently.

"I went back a little too far when I was checking the main Hub's CCTV footage. No one saw fit to mention that as one of his first acts back from the dead, dear old Jack snogged the teaboy? Didn't know you had it in you, Ianto. I take back what I said the other day, clearly being his part-time shag wasn't just in your dreams."

Ianto was right, this definitely wasn't going to go well for him.

"Is it true, Ianto? Are you and Jack...seeing each other?" At least it was Tosh who asked, not Gwen; she sounded pleased as well as curious, so he downed what was left in his glass and went ahead and answered.

"If you're asking if we were in a relationship, the answer's no. More...friends with benefits."

"Ha!" Owen exclaimed. "I knew it! So much for being more than just a shag to him."

Ianto raised an eyebrow in Owen's direction. "What part of 'friends' don't you understand? Or do you just not place any value on the concept, Owen? Not that that would be much of a surprise," he mused, "since I can't imagine you actually have any friends."

"Oi! Shagging him without making him buy you dinner first doesn't make you friends, you tosser."

"No," Ianto conceded, "but talking does. Including about things neither of us is comfortable discussing with just anyone. And before you go assuming I'm imagining it, Jack flat-out said he considered me a friend before anything ever happened between us physically." Not _long_ before, but they didn't need to know that. As far as Ianto was concerned, it counted.

"I'm sorry, Ianto," Tosh said. "If I'd known something was going on between you I never would have said what I did about when we were stuck in 1941."

He shrugged and forced himself to say, "It's fine. I told you, we weren't dating. Jack didn't owe me anything, so he didn't do anything wrong. And neither did you." It was the truth, and maybe one day he'd even believe it. Not that it mattered anymore, since he couldn't imagine Jack had any reason to come back.

"How long?" Gwen asked, looking uncharacteristically subdued.

"Sorry?" Was she seriously asking him to gossip about his not-a-relationship with their absent boss? Had she _met_ him?

"How long have you and Jack been...whatever?"

Apparently she was. Then again, this was the same woman who could think of nothing better to discuss on a team-building outing than "who was your last snog", so he probably shouldn't be surprised by her nosiness. Come to think of it, his comfort level hadn't mattered when she'd started that line of questioning either.

"I hardly think that's any of your business."

"Besides," Owen added, "it's obvious, innit? How else do you think he kept Jack from finding his secret robot girlfriend?"

Oh, that was _it_. "You ever dare suggest I would have cheated on Lisa again, and you'll find yourself with a matching bullet wound in your other shoulder," he growled.

Owen just scoffed. "Like I actually believe you were aiming for my shoulder in the first place."

"Try me."

"Owen, stop antagonising him," Tosh said. "I've seen his weapon qualification scores--they're higher than anyone's except for Jack. And Ianto, I believe you, but given everything that happened that night, I admit I'm curious about when things changed between you and Jack myself. Though I agree it's none of our business."

Ianto sighed and leaned back, contemplating his glass. It really was very good whiskey. He couldn't believe he was even considering this; if it were just Tosh, he wouldn't mind so much, but Owen and Gwen as well?

"What's with the sudden interest in my personal life? It wasn't that long ago none of you even noticed I was in the room half the time."

"I'm happy to go back to that--"

"Shut it, Owen," Gwen snapped before turning to Ianto and beginning in that faux-sympathetic voice that always drove him up the wall, "We're just trying to get to know you, sweetheart--"

"First, _don't_ call me that. I'm not your sweetheart, we're not even friends really, and using terms of endearment all the time is just patronising. Stop talking to me like I'm a child. And second," he continued, raising his voice to be heard over Gwen's objection and Owen's snicker, "you've had months to try and get to know me, and never bothered. Why now?"

Gwen spluttered for a bit, apparently unable to come up with an answer, until Tosh took pity on her and said, "I'm not sure it's so much about you really, Ianto, as it is about Jack. We're all curious about him, and he told us so little. You can tell us more--not any secrets he confided in you, of course you wouldn't betray his confidence, but surely things that happened to you that Jack just happened to be part of are fair game. After all, if he'd minded us knowing about your--arrangement, he wouldn't have kissed you in front of me and Gwen."

He had to concede that point. "Not exactly discreet today, was he?"

Gwen opened her mouth, but before she could speak Owen kicked her in the shin. Ianto ducked his head to hide a smirk.

Ordinarily, he wouldn't give in. Tosh was a friend, but Owen and Gwen weren't, and he'd learned the hard way that being seen as sleeping with the boss made life difficult, regardless of whether it was true. Of course, he'd already admitted that in this case, it was. Not that Jack had left him much choice in that, really.... Then there was that secret, vengeful part of himself that resented Gwen for refusing to leave Jack's side like some grieving widow, when she had a very real, very alive, very _human_ boyfriend waiting for her at home. If Dr Tanizaki had successfully brought Lisa back the way opening the Rift had Rhys, he wouldn't have left her side so soon for anything. It would be nice to knock Gwen down a peg or two, rub her face in the fact that while they'd both had Jack's trust (as far as that went), and neither had his heart, only Ianto had had his body. And though he'd never asked, he was quite certain of that--given how obvious she'd been during her affair with Owen, there was no way Gwen could have slept with Jack without the entire team knowing. Of course, that was more because Jack had more respect for Gwen's supposedly-monogamous relationship than she did than due to any actual preference for Ianto over her, but he wasn't about to let her know that.

It was times like these he was really glad Tosh had destroyed that telepathy pendant. He took a moment to reinforce his shields just in case.

"If I tell you, can we all agree to never talk about this again?" he asked at length, refilling his glass to get him through the ordeal ahead.

"I don't even want to talk about it now," Owen claimed, though he made no attempt to leave.

The girls promised, and he more or less trusted Tosh to hold the others to it, so he forged ahead.

"It was after Mary," he said with an apologetic look for Tosh. "What Jack did to her...brought up memories. Things...happened that night, a lot was said, and we...cleared the air a bit, I suppose. When all was said and done, I just needed to feel something. We agreed it would just be one night, then everything would go back to normal."

"And how long did that last?" Tosh asked.

He smirked. "Less than twenty-four hours."

"What, you just couldn't keep your hands off the boss any longer than that?"

"Actually, Owen, it was the other way around. Tosh and I had stayed late to discuss something with him, and after she went home Jack...asked me to stay. I decided there was no good reason not to; Jack can be very persuasive."

"I bet he can," Tosh said mischievously. "You needn't answer if you don't want to, Ianto, but I've got to ask: what's he like?"

"Let's just say he's nearly as good as he thinks he is." More than good enough to make Ianto's brain shut down, stop him from second-guessing everything, even if only temporarily.

"Really?!"

"Oh, yeah...and that's all I'm going to say on the subject."

"Fair enough."

"So that's it, then? You've been shagging Jack since Mary?"

He winced internally at the phrasing, but Gwen looked disturbed by the idea even as she asked the question, so he went ahead and corrected her.

"Oh, no, that was it for about a week."

"What happened after a week?"

"Suzie."

The others winced at the memory.

"So, what, you jumped each other over Suzie's corpse? That's sick, even for Harkness." Despite his words, Owen sounded almost impressed.

"That's not--It wasn't--Look, knowing what you do about Jack Harkness, what would you imagine his preferred form of comfort is?"

"Sex," they chorused, not needing to give it any thought.

"Precisely. Resurrecting Suzie and having to kill her again and again took a lot out of him. He clearly needed something, and just as clearly didn't have the energy to go on the pull. Even Jack has to put _some_ effort into being charming. So, I offered," he explained with a shrug. "It's not like it was the first time, and it wasn't exactly a hardship." If Jack had ended up needing more than simple sex to deal with his guilt over killing Suzie, well, they _really_ didn't need to know that. He raised his glass to hide the smile he could never suppress at the memory of that night. Jack may have been the one who'd needed it, but it had been a heady experience for Ianto. Knowing Jack had trusted him like that, had let himself be so vulnerable, had finally made it possible for Ianto to believe he'd meant it when he'd said he thought of Ianto as a friend. Knowing he'd been able to surprise him so thoroughly, in a good way for a change, and seeing the impressed look in Jack's eyes, had been even better.

"A sacrifice you were willing to make to cheer up a friend after a rough couple of days?" Tosh asked in mock solemnity

"Exactly. And, well...after that we basically accepted it was likely to happen again, and stopped bothering with excuses. I'm not looking to meet anyone so soon, even if I had the time to try, and Jack's Jack, so...why not? The arrangement worked for both of us, but though he never said anything about leaving, there were no promises made. Aside from the unspoken one to keep things strictly private, of course, so I've no idea why he kissed me in front of you like that. My point is, we weren't in a relationship, he owed me nothing in that respect, and he didn't wrong me by leaving any more than he did the rest of you. End of story." He thought it was important to get that last bit in; so far only Tosh had looked at him with--maybe not pity, exactly, but sympathy at least--but it was only a matter of time before Owen started snarking him about it. He didn't even want to think how Gwen might act once she decided to be "supportive".

Gwen still looked sulky, but Tosh refilled his glass and clinked it with hers. "Well, whatever it was, if it worked for you both I'm happy for you. Or I would be, I suppose, if Jack were still here."

"Thanks, Tosh."

"I'm not sure what's harder to wrap my head around, that Jack shagged Teaboy in the first place or that he apparently kept coming back for more."

"Knock it off, Owen. I don't know why you're surprised they'd be attracted to each other. They're both gorgeous--hush, Ianto, you are--and Jack's flirted more with Ianto than anyone else since the day he arrived. The only part I find at all confusing is that I thought you hated Jack, after...."

"After Lisa. It's all right, you can say it, Tosh. And I did. I hated all of you, really, to one extent or another."

"And yet I'm guessing you forgave him by the time anything happened between you?"

"It's--complicated. But, ultimately, yes, I did. I forgave all of you a long time ago."

Owen groaned. "Oh, god, please don't tell me you're about to get soppy. Like this conversation wasn't painful enough to sit through already."

"Shut it, Owen," Gwen said again. Ianto suddenly felt bad about his uncharitable thoughts towards her, even though she couldn't be aware of them. Probably.

"Make me."

"It's all right, Gwen. He's probably just jealous."

"Oi! Take that back!"

He pretended to think for a moment. "No, don't think I will." Then his conscience got through the alcohol and he felt the need to stop taunting Gwen, however indirectly. "But that's all irrelevant now, anyway. Torchwood is currently without a leader, and we have no idea if or when he'll return. What are we going to do about it?"

"What's the big deal?" Gwen asked. "We've managed without him before."

"Yes, but we always knew he was coming back," Tosh explained. "Usually, we even knew when. It's much easier to put off UNIT or the Palace when you can give them a date they'll be able to talk to Jack if they don't want to deal with us."

"Should we really decide that now, though, when we've all been drinking?"

"No reason not to, Gwen. Think how often we have to make life-and-death decisions while low on sleep and high on caffeine; none of us have drunk enough yet to be significantly more impaired than we are on a regular basis."

"How _are_ we going to do this indefinitely without Harkness, anyway? Suzie had most of the codes and things, but he never got around to naming and training a new second after she killed herself."

"That won't be a problem," Ianto assured them. "I know all of the codes, procedures, and other administrative details. You know how much he hated doing paperwork; he handed me all of his passwords and so on shortly after I started working here, so he could foist some of it off on me. I can handle the official and recordkeeping side of things; I do a lot of it already."

"So that leaves us needing to decide who'll make the decisions and run things in the field, then," Gwen summarised, seeming happier now that they'd moved off of the subject of Jack and Ianto's sex life. For once, Ianto agreed with her wholeheartedly, happy to fade into the background once more as the discussion continued around him. All the more so as it had been a really long, really difficult week, and he didn't know how much longer he could keep pretending he didn't feel betrayed.


End file.
